I picked up a copy of Carpenter's Gothic about ten years ago and it was one of those instances where you get about ten pages in and realise how much the world of writing still has to offer you, that there will always be new and greater geniuses that you've never heard of and that thrills you in the way the potential of sunny Saturday mornings or long summer evenings used to as a child.
Carpenter's Gothic tells the pretty obfuscated tale of disenfranchised characters, an inveterate liar and his unhappy wife along with a strange visitor but reading Gaddis, at least for me, at least then, happened to be a whole lot like Listening to music. It almost ( Kill me for saying this ) didn't even matter what was happening, or at least it mattered less, because the prose was so crazily beautiful. The nuances shocked me, the way characters spoke across one another and how simple things like walking up a hill were phrased in Gaddis' Modernist way that foreshadowed everything I'd later read in Infinite Jest and The Corrections. His take on simple, common or garden Amercanisms, something I still read very much as a foreign language, were fascinating. I bookmarked them. I used to write down passages of his words. The simple but rewarding way you do that with your writing heroes.
The books are not easy to read. JR and The Recognitions ask a great deal of the reader, I'm told. Personally I couldn't put either down and, as with all books I truly love, I staggered my reading hours, hoping to drawn out every last second of reading time from each. To this end I have yet to read 'A Frolic of his own.' The fact it's out there makes the world a potentially better place. I might never read it.
Another reason I might never read it is because when I read someone I tend to take on quite a few of their writing habits in my own writing. I've noticed this only on re-reads. I once wrote a Science Fiction short story about the exploitation of the natives of a distant plant in the style of Samuel Beckett. To this end I need to keep away from Mr. Gaddis at least until I'm finished this latest book.
